Increase Your Bench Press and Define Your Chest - Chest Training
When people see that you lift weights or you start talking about working out, what's the number one question you hear the most? 'How much do you bench?' If I had a dime for every time I've been asked that, I'd be loaded.
Until recently my bench has always been weak and I've always struggled with it.
I later learned that calorie intake had a role in gaining strength but as most of you know when you get a little older, you can't just eat everything in sight.
So you're left with this conception that you have to sacrifice strength for not gaining fat, or vice versa.
You can find a multitude of articles on ways to increase your bench press strength and just as many articles on how to attain a ripped chest.
But is there a way to do both at the same time? Many believe you can only do one or the other but I'm convinced that you can achieve the fullness of both strength and definition.
After all, that's the ultimate goal, not one or the other.
It's important to remember that diet plays a huge role here for both, but I'm going to cover the 'technical' side of it, as in lifting techniques.
What I've found that works well for me, for both strength and definition is working chest twice a week.
Now I hear a lot of talk about over training, but I personally feel if you're diet and nutrition is in check and you're getting adequate rest, it's difficult to actually over train.
Maybe this varies for different people, but I get stronger and leaner when I'm hitting each body part twice a week.
Specifically for chest though, I break this down into two completely different workouts for chest, three days apart.
The first workout is a series of exercises focused to hit your chest at different angles.
For example, you will start out with incline dumbbell press, then decline barbell press, then incline dumbbell flyes, then decline Hammer Strength press.
Do three sets of each, going heavy weight with low reps on the first two exercises, then for the last two exercises use moderate weight and focus on the contractions.
Hitting different angles will bring out definition in your chest (though again, diet and cardio play more of a role in overall definition) as well as build strength in various parts of your chest.
The second workout is very basic and short.
You'll start out with barbell bench press doing four sets of heavy weight with low reps then you'll do three sets of barbell incline press.
Below is an outline of this chest program for both days.
Day 1 (Monday) Incline Dumbbell Press - 3 sets of 12, 10, 8 Decline Barbell Press - 3 sets of 10, 8, 6 Incline Dumbbell Flyes - 3 sets of 12 Decline Hammer Strength Press - 3 sets of 12 Day 2 (Thursday) Barbell Bench Press - 4 sets of 5, 5, 3, 3 Incline Barbell Press - 3 sets of 10, 8, 6 Some may prefer to do this in reverse order, meaning do the second workout first as it's more of a power and strength workout.
I've tried that and oddly enough I get better results from the way as listed above.
If you feel the reverse works better for you, go for it.
But I encourage you to try the above routine first.
Until recently my bench has always been weak and I've always struggled with it.
I later learned that calorie intake had a role in gaining strength but as most of you know when you get a little older, you can't just eat everything in sight.
So you're left with this conception that you have to sacrifice strength for not gaining fat, or vice versa.
You can find a multitude of articles on ways to increase your bench press strength and just as many articles on how to attain a ripped chest.
But is there a way to do both at the same time? Many believe you can only do one or the other but I'm convinced that you can achieve the fullness of both strength and definition.
After all, that's the ultimate goal, not one or the other.
It's important to remember that diet plays a huge role here for both, but I'm going to cover the 'technical' side of it, as in lifting techniques.
What I've found that works well for me, for both strength and definition is working chest twice a week.
Now I hear a lot of talk about over training, but I personally feel if you're diet and nutrition is in check and you're getting adequate rest, it's difficult to actually over train.
Maybe this varies for different people, but I get stronger and leaner when I'm hitting each body part twice a week.
Specifically for chest though, I break this down into two completely different workouts for chest, three days apart.
The first workout is a series of exercises focused to hit your chest at different angles.
For example, you will start out with incline dumbbell press, then decline barbell press, then incline dumbbell flyes, then decline Hammer Strength press.
Do three sets of each, going heavy weight with low reps on the first two exercises, then for the last two exercises use moderate weight and focus on the contractions.
Hitting different angles will bring out definition in your chest (though again, diet and cardio play more of a role in overall definition) as well as build strength in various parts of your chest.
The second workout is very basic and short.
You'll start out with barbell bench press doing four sets of heavy weight with low reps then you'll do three sets of barbell incline press.
Below is an outline of this chest program for both days.
Day 1 (Monday) Incline Dumbbell Press - 3 sets of 12, 10, 8 Decline Barbell Press - 3 sets of 10, 8, 6 Incline Dumbbell Flyes - 3 sets of 12 Decline Hammer Strength Press - 3 sets of 12 Day 2 (Thursday) Barbell Bench Press - 4 sets of 5, 5, 3, 3 Incline Barbell Press - 3 sets of 10, 8, 6 Some may prefer to do this in reverse order, meaning do the second workout first as it's more of a power and strength workout.
I've tried that and oddly enough I get better results from the way as listed above.
If you feel the reverse works better for you, go for it.
But I encourage you to try the above routine first.
Source...